


Dollhouse Review - Belle Chose

by shadowkat67



Series: Dollhouse Episode Reviews [8]
Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-17
Updated: 2009-10-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Series: Dollhouse Episode Reviews [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612507





	Dollhouse Review - Belle Chose

**Review of Belle Chose, episode 3 of S2 Dollhouse.**   


_Belle Chose_ starts with a neatly dressed guy who is playing a somewhat twisted version of doll house with living women. Each carefully posed and dressed like life-size versions of the Barbie Dolls you may have had while growing up. All that is missing is their house. He has them in a warehouse of sorts. Standing motionless like store manniquens or life size Barbies on an astroturf lawn, with lawn chairs, and a croquet set. All that is missing is a Ken Doll (which may well be Terry) and Barbie's Dream House. Each has been given a non-descript name of a family member, Sis, Aunt Sheila, Mom...with matching ages. In a way he is acting out a scenario that the real "Dollhouse" provides as a service to its clients all the time. Except Terry, the lead in this twisted rendering, is doing it unseen and with unwilling participants.

When one of the dolls that Terry has positioned loses her ability to stand rock solid still in a somewhat insane position, and falls to the ground. He smashes her head in with the croquet mallet and then wanders off to get another to take her place. "I need a new Aunt Sheila" - he informs his hostages, who fearfully stand motionless, without a blink or a shudder. We later learn this is in part due to the drug he's given them that paralyzes their limbs - so they can be positioned but cannot move of their own volition. Their bodies mere tools of their captor.

Terry gets hit by a car, and ironically ends up comatose in the actual Dollhouse. Where Adelle and Topher decide to play dolls with Terry - switching his mind into Victor's body.  
So that Victor (as Terry) can now be interrogated by Ballard, the ex-FBI agent.

While this is going on - Echo is playing the role of "Kiki" - a ditzy, sexy college student who just loves to dance and have a fine old time. It turns out that she has been ordered by a professor who has a wicked student/teacher sex fantasy that he needs to be fulfilled.  
Kiki - has no real volition of her own, she is nothing more or less than the professor's sex fantasy. That's her role and she's been created by Topher to play it without fault. She is clearly meant to be nothing more or less than a sex object.

The comparison between the professor/Dollhouse and Terry is I think deliberate. What the Dollhouse is doing to Echo is in a way no different than what Terry has done to the missing women. Granted Echo may have at one point given consent, but was it informed consent? And to what degree does it matter? Just because you say "yes" to being transformed into a doll - does that make it alright?

At times, Dollhouse reminds me a great deal of _The Stepford Wives_ (the old 1970s film with Kathryn Ross (not the new version) and the novel upon which it was based) -that dealt with the horrors of humans turning into or becoming replace by a superficial world. _Surrogates_ is the latest film in this particular trope. Last week's episode in particular, _Instinct_ \- where Echo was imprinted to be the perfect wife and mother, complete with fake friend in the form of Sierra, reminded me of _The Stepford Wives_. Again, the female nightmare is being replaced by a mindless robot that fulfills every males perfect fantasy. Or rather the female nightmare is in some respects the male fantasy. He fantasies an object that cooks his meals, satisfies his needs, cleans his house, rears his kids and never complains or argues and does what women are "supposed" to do, without demands, complaints, or needs. What he doesn't know is his fantasy is many a woman's nightmare.

This episode made me think of that as well...at the start of the episode, we are clearly in the male fantasy/female nightmare. Ballard is turned on by Echo's transformation into adorable and ditzy Kiki. Her clothes, her hair, her moves. She is his fantasy as well as the professor's. Terry too is living the male fantasy - he controls each of the women in his basement lair - they are little more than objects for play.

Then something goes wrong...Terry's uncle takes Victor/Terry out of the Dollhouse in an attempt to get what he requires from Terry himself. But Terry either knocks him out or kills him - can't remember which and not sure it matters. Then takes off to find his new Aunt Sheila. Before he can find her - Topher in an attempt to isolate and then wipe Terry remotely from Victor's head - inadvertently switchs Terry to Echo and Kiki to Victor. In a flash, Victor becomes gay, airy, Kiki. He comes on to every male in the room, still convinced he is a she. He still acts like a sexy girl - except in a man's body. He is the male's worste nightmare, a sex object, with no needs but to please. It's a tour de force for the actor - who convincingly portrays the body swap. Echo becomes Terry and instead of kissing the professor, shoves a letter opener into his neck. And says, **"Goodness, gracious. Look at me."** Words that come up again, later.

Terry unlike silly Kiki, figures out that he is now a she. That his body has changed. He also figures out how to use it. In the mirror he writes the words - Whore. Boyd finds the words and the barely breathing, but still living professor. While Ballard tracks down Victor's Kiki and saves him from a potential beating at a club, with Victor/Kiki embracing him as a result.  
The fantasy shifting rapidly into heterosexual/straight male nightmare.

Echo/Terry is back at the basement now - no longer worried about getting another Aunt Sheila - since he has one in the body he is currently inhabitating. His female captives seeing Echo, aren't sure how to react. They attempt to escape and are surprised that Echo beats them back and acts like Terry. Echo glitches and tells them in a bit of monotone that they must kill her before Terry comes back. That Terry won't let her - let them go. It's clear from "the dialogue" that Echo is suffering from a multiple personality disorder - she is fractured and has more than one consciousness inside her. Terry has just been added to the mix and is the first male personality to inhabit it. He's also a killer and a misogynistic one at that - one who kills women, after objectifying and playing with them for hours on end, much as a cat may with a mouse or a little girl with her barbie dolls. Terry is a woman's worste nightmare and all the personalities inside Echo are screaming.

But Echo fights Terry off long enough for the Dollhouse handlers to shop up and contain the situation. The hostages are released. And Echo is taken to get a treatment. Ballard asks her if she is okay, she says really not and yes, she definitely needs a treatment.

And she gets one. The Beauty Chooses. Terry is left in a coma. Possibly may even be allowed to die. Happy ending.

Except. Echo goes into Terry's room and looks at him. Her face is blank. Her body the same as always and she says **"Goodness Gracious"**. Revealing to anyone paying close attention, that Terry is still there, along with all the others. Of course he is. They can't just wipe him clean.

 _They don't really leave_ Echo tells Ballard in Instinct. _I still feel all of them. All the time. Whispering to me. I feel what they felt. Their emotions._

or as Caroline/Echo once told Adelle ages ago, hence her nickname "echo"...

_It's like a chalkboard - you can't ever wipe the slate entirely clean. You can always see a faint outline of what was erased._

Claire Sanders remembers Whiskey, she remembers who she played. The roles they fed to her, if just the outlines. Victor...remembers Adelle, when she touches his face and comments on it. Just as the paralyzed dolls in Terry's make-believe doll house, remember who they are, and their bodies though frozen, protest and move.

The male nightmare is that you can't control the woman. You place her in that neat little role, but she resists. She moves out of it. She's not the life-size doll. She's not willing to be your slave. Make her the fantasy and she stabs you in the neck, much as Olenna stabs the professor in the neck, metaphorically speaking, in David Mamet's play - protesting his treatment of her - even if it is not advert, and merely sexist. Kiki wishes only to dance, to have a good time. The professor wishes to turn her into something else. Her grades a tool for his fantasy. And finally, the comeuppance - the male misogynistic serial killer stuck or at least a portion of him, in the mind of a female doll, with multiple women inside her. Is it punishment or reward? Hard to tell.

Dollhouse leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth after watching. The type of taste that you don't always want to focus too hard on. Just rinse out with Listerine, quickly. It is psychological horror within the same veine as _The Stepford Wives_ , leaving much the same bitter aftertaste. Worth exploring if only because it serves as both a reminder and a exploration of our own twisted societal perspective conveyed time and again through the media that we mindlessly worship and adhere to.  



End file.
